How I Stayed Faithful to Swingtown

I watched the entire series of Swingtown. No, I’m serious. Beginning to end. Didn’t miss a single one. Kept watching even after I realized the show was never going to live up to its potential, that rather than being Big Love with bellbottoms, it ended up being a case study in eBay fiction, more interesting for its curated details of 1970s collectors’ items (and its soundtrack), interspersed with the occasional good character moment. The disparity between the outstanding Molly Parker as Susan and Jack Davenport, who seemed to have prepared for his role by watching old episodes of The Brady Bunch, was one of the biggest imbalances I’ve seen in a pair of leads on a drama series.

And yet I watched. Because it happens sometimes. It becomes like ‘Nam. You can’t extricate yourself. You commit, and you are duty-bound to ride that sucker all the way to the bottom.

Bravo, apparently, feels that there must be a few other dead-enders out there like me who will watch the show in its entirety, because it has picked up the reruns, which will marathon this Friday, from noon until 1 a.m.

Am I alone in my single-mindedness? Did anyone else stick it out with Swingtown? If not, has there ever been a series you had to watch until the end, even after you realized that it wasn’t actually, you know, good?